Monday, October 31, 2005

It's time to make the buttons... finally got my box of 1,000 1" buttons this morning. That means tonight I'll be messing around with buttons, buttons and more buttons. I'm sure I'll have a couple of drinks as well.I'm wondering if I'll get any trick-or-treat'rs this evening... i have a bit of candy to give out, but the fewer that show up the better of my own stash will become. So all you little tricksters need to stay away... the candy is mine!! All mine!!! Maybe I'll give you a button instead of candy... ha ha ha ha!!!—Here are some more pictures from the Fashion Show... these were taken by the professinal photographer they hired.... hmmmm. Not that interesting, but worth posting... I stole them off his site hense the PROOF label on them all. I'm sure Kanka shoot way better photos than these.

Sunday, October 30, 2005

Spent the majority of today installing towel bars and knobs on cabinet doors... such a brillaint and stimulating exercise. The big task is to get the studio space built out and ready to work in as soon as possible. I'm going to purchase lumber this next weekend and start crafting the large center table first... and possiblely the two tables that will be on casters. There are a lot of things I need to build... including the entertainment center for the house. It'll be big and bad!!Also today I went to the 'storage unit' which is now completely empty — can't believe I had all my stuff in this small space — I have about 500 small holes that need to be filled with spackle. Have beer will travel. The spackle I have is pretty neat stuff... it goes on pink so you can see it and then dries white... very interesting stuff.—Just wrapped filling in the walls... at one point the entire place looked like a pimple faced teen... so many holes in those walls — unreal... pink spots everywhere.

Saturday, October 29, 2005

Moving the final remnants from the 'storage unit' a.k.a old Apt. — to much shit... way to much. Going to go shopping and pick out some new furniture and other such things... gonna blow a huge wad of cash today.

Thursday, October 27, 2005

DRESS COUNTDOWN: TODAY—Todays the day. My nerves are still on edge. I have to finish a small portion of the arm bands this afternoon but it's a task that should only take me a few hours at most. As I write this, the dress is waiting in the back of my car... it's probably wondering where the hell it's going. I'm asking myself the same question.Tonight should be interesting. Here are more details for UNCOMMON THREADS.

Release your mouse and escape to a place where assumptions about paper, as a medium for design, have been unraveled. With the distinctions and commonalities of culture as inspiration, designers from the Atlanta area have snipped, glued, stapled, velcroed and otherwise fashioned Uncommon Threads for your enjoyment. Join us at Unisource on Thursday, October 27, 2005 at 5:00-8:30pm for this very stylish event. Black tie is unnecessary…..but not unpardonable. Unisource is located at 6600 Governors Lake Parkway, Norcross, Georgia 30071. Limited Seating. Please RSVP by October 24, 2005.These featured ensembles will be constructed entirely from paper and will include creations by the following:

Many of you have asked me how to get to Unisource. We have a direction line which can be reached by dialing:770-734-2020. Please call this line to get directions. If you have any further questions please give me a call.

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

This is it... the final day before the show. The outfit is 95% complete... there are just a few minor pieces I need to finish in the morning. Kanka stopped by to have a drink and he snapped a few picture of the final piece.

Monday, October 24, 2005

DRESS COUNTDOWN: 3 DAYS—So yesterday I spent the every minute of my time working on the dress... I worked until 5:30am this morning and then got ready to go to work. It's actually starting to come all together in the end. I attached everything to the armature belt... the dress portion is complete... amazing!!! I built out every section of the jacket and began to conect the pieces. I think the outfit will be totally complete this evening — minus a few little pieces here and there. I still need to create all the patches and buttons for the jacket... as well as complete all the die-cuts that are on it. Sleeves will be an open striped paper... and will be easy to assemble.

I mixed a musical score for my runway action. It's 1:30 and pretty interesting... combines some dance beats with Korean Court music... children speaking Korean and an interestng clip from a North korean propagandist radio recording. Good stuff.

Saturday, October 22, 2005

DRESS COUNTDOWN: 5 DAYS—Today is a moving day... not much happening... a whole lot moving. I have so much to do on the dress... there is just no time. Will be up late into the night working on it I'm sure.

Sunday, October 16, 2005

So today I ran around town with Steph. We grabbed some grub at Thumbs Up and began taking care of all sorts of errands... most important of all — the purchase of a pair of white shoes for the fashion show. We hit the art store to pick up a massive amount of X-Acto blades (since I was fresh out) at PEARL. I also picked up a really cool patterned trim die cutter that I might use on the edging of some of the dress. I was testing it out a bit this evening and it looks really great... the pattern runs 2" and I'll use it to run an 18" strip down both sides of the inner and out dress components.Later in the afternoon Steph did a fitting of the dress portion with the shoes and it looked pretty good. Not to long not too short (I adjusted the dress form correctly). Steph walked around a bit in it and the dress stayed in place pretty well, but I'm going to add an adjustment or two to help keep it in place just a little better. I like the fact that it can move, but I don't want it to shift so much that it looses its form completely... this is the fear. So I'll make sure that doesn't happen with a few select adjustments to each adjacent piece.Most of the die cutting is complete for the dress portion. I only have a little bit more to do here and there (thankfully). Then I'll move immediately to the jacket. I'll be traveling to North Carolina monday and tuesday to print another book this week so inbetween press checks I'm going to assemble all of the smaller pieces for the jacket (shoulder bands, medals, and such). They are small enough to get done over those two days. Once I get the jacket complete I'll only have attach these pieces.The last important piece to this outfit is the military hat... which thankfully I've already mapped out. It will only take me a day to complete it. Yeah I also measured Stephs cute little head today... so everything is pretty much covered. I hope.... ??Well back to it... huu'raah!!

White paper has shown it's face and finally this dress is starting to take form. The brown paper won't do anymore... have to move to the real stuff. Really happy with the shape the outer section of the dress bloomed into. Just like I planed. These are the 5 piece that have the floral pattern on them. There is still a lot of detailed die-cutting on these 5 badies, but I wanted to get them onto the dress form tonight to make sure they popped like I thought they would. Each of the outer 5 dress petals is only 2 pieces. Tomorrow afternoon and evening I'll tackle the inner layer of the dress as well as the other parts. At this point though I'm starting to feel really good about the dress portion. It seems to be coming together as planned. This weekend I'll cut the jacket and fit it. That'll be the real test. Now that In have the main dress parts attached I've noticed that I will be taking the bottom of the jacket up another 2 inches. Thats about a foot off the entire length of the original patterned coat. Going to take the jacket in around the armpits. The sleeves are something that I'm still waiting on. I might not go full sleeve. I'll see how it goes.As with any work of art this one is evolving as I go, while sticking to its foundational drawings. I'm getting really excited. Today marks the 2 week point... let's rock!

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

Completed 7 sets of postcards last night. That should keep me held over untill the day I move in. That will keep focus on the dress up until that point in time. I'll probably develope another set of cards for that period between now and that time, but now the main focus is this dress.Here is the sketch for the jacket and other portions of the dress that weren't the main pieces. I still need to work out the head pieces... time is slipping!!!

The dress has these 9 pieces that are themselves interconnected with each other in sets of 3. There are a total of 27 main pieces. The 4 inner pieces (the longer of the 9) are going to have the 4 seasons on them. The outer will be floral patterns and trigrams. All of the 9 pieces have a ying-yang on them at the circle base. The 4 inner are the crest version. Each piece will have a pattern cut into it so as to resemble lace or intricate weaves. These patterns will be based in large areas, but used sparingly as they will take some time to cut out.There are 3 other frontal pieces. 2 long drapes that flag the left and right legs as well as an intricate center piece. There will be long thinly sliced paper on the inner most section of the dress.

Tuesday, October 11, 2005

So the three books I ordered will be here tomorrow. Great news as far as my tight deadlines are concerned.- Traditional Korean Designs- Traditional Japanese Crest Designs- Japanese Floral Patterns and Motifs

I'm really excited.. this means I'll be able to start referencing these books for the designs I'll create and cut this weekend. I had to purchase these books because there was no time to take all the different patterning I had found on the internet and translate it into a full size rendering. That would have just taken me to long to draft out. So instead these books should act like a springboard and get me a lot further in the designing of these die-cuts. It's a big weight of my shoulders.Tonight I plan on completing the cutting of all the dress components. Then I should be able to cut the 6 Korean trigrams into each of the large pieces. Then I finish with cutting the large cirle placeholders for the ying yangs.

Monday, October 10, 2005

11:18PMSo... the night has finally come to it's near close. Nick Cave is screaming — You better run to the city of refugee. What has been accomplished... what , what, and again for myself what. This evening I cut 35 large components and another 60 small components for the dress portion. Now these are just the paper base structures mind you. If it took me an entire night to cut these, it's going to take me days to cut the intricate patterning into each of these. I think... if all my reference materials arrive on time (I ordered 3 Korean/Japanese pattern books the other day) I'll be able to begin this arduous task by the weekend. The weekend.... ohh boy. This weekend is going to unfortunately consist of nothing but intricate die-cuting — die after die after die. 95 pieces worth... and that's just the basic portions of the dress. I still have several other portions that need ample time for detailed cutting including, the yet to be assembled jacket — the piece that still looms as the most daunting task. I'll have to bite both my bottom and top lip this week and begin to make the fateful steps of cutting and gluing the real thing together. The idea is to have everything built out structurally in real Monadnock paper before I move into the new studio space. There I want to spend all my time assembling and adjusting. The only portions I'll allow myself to continue building at that time will be the jackets detail pieces — patches, medals and ribbons. Only the decorations should be left at that point.So how do I really feel about this project at this point in the process... well and well and well again. I've never tried to put my feelings about the art making process into a written format before. I'll hint at the fact that this project is reaching the point where I start to feel that internal surge I get with most of my work... a kind of creative half-court press the culminates in the final days of production feeling like an orgasm of emotive creativity and kinship with the work — I want to smoke a cigarette in bed with the final product. I always take these projects right to the breaking point... Hitchcock understood this ideal... Grace Kelly's reckless abandonment as she speed around narrow streets with Cary Grant in 'To Catch A Thief' or hell... even my girl Ingrid speeding away with Cary in 'Notorious'. Something about the air of knowing no matter what you do, no matter how far you careen toward the edge of oblivion, you'll always have an inherent knack for pulling away at the last second and cruising forward into another more daunting obstacle. I think this is what drives me... the idea of danger around every corner... that death is but a lovers kiss away from your lips. There is something grand in the amusement behind danger & death — For me, it's the game of trying to beat it at all costs with the least bit of effort. I think it's a game I'll play for a long while because I know I'm the one who can cause the death a every turn. There's nothing like playing a game of chance with oneself... especially when the outcome is failure. And nothing in life is worse than failure.When it finally comes I want to hold it close and whisper to it. When it kisses me, it'll be strong.

—4:23PMOK — Tonight is dress night. The goals for the night are as follows.

Sunday, October 09, 2005

This weekend has been totally consumed with a freelance design job. So needless to say i didn't get much done with the dress. Now whether or not this is a bad thing... I suppose I'll have to wait untill I get a couple of days out from the show. Then we'll see if I actually start to kick myself. Outside of the freelance job, not too much occured this weekend.I've finally entered the real countdown for the house, as 10 is really the only number you should ever count down from. This is going to be a really long 10 days... they are gonna drag on by... i just feel it. However I might be pleasently suprised at how fast it passes considering the fact that I'll have to be at the office working 5 days out of those 10.

Thursday, October 06, 2005

For some reason or another I've become totally readdicted to one of my favorite bands of all time (not that I ever got over then though). I used to listen to them religiously as a kid and now I'm back to that mode of thinking again. I wonder what it's all about... ohh well. I'll just get back to rockin'. Let's get to together and end it all... Let's get together in a bathroom stall. Let's get together and slit our wrists... Let's get together and do the twist.

I didn't do any work on the dress last night... waiting for friday and the weekend. Instead, I did some work on the cherrylipped.com main web site. I was batch processing around a 1,000 different images getting them ready to be imported into Flash. I'll begin to place most of the images into the site in the next few weeks, after all the structural elements are built and the text based content and section mapping is finsihed. It's coming along a lot faster now than I had first thought. I have a really solid base structure to work on, so adding materials and creating new sections is really easy now. Most of the needed elements that can be found in each section are already waiting in the library to be droped in. There are only a few elements that need to be created anew as I go along. Anyways — I will still be postingthe site January 1, 2006... even though now I think I'd be able to post it sooner.